“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” – James A. Baldwin
Black History Month Section Inside •
C e l e b r a t i n g 4 9 Ye a r s o f S e r v i c e
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Serving More Than 50,000 African American Readers Throughout The Metropolitan Area / Vol. 49, No.17 Feb. 6 - Feb. 12, 2014
Deltas Visit Hallowed Halls!
Members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a 101-year-old African-American nonprofit and service organization convened for its 25th annual Delta Days in the Nation’s Capital. See Story on Page 11. /Photo by Roy Lewis
Black Staffers Battle Racism and Discrimination at World Bank By Barrington M. Salmon WI Staff Writer @bsalmondc For more than seven years, Yonas Biru has been fighting the World Bank. The Ethiopian native and Silver Spring, Md., resident said he’s learned the hard way the
price of being black at the venerable institution. Biru, a married father of three, says the World Bank dismissed him because he challenged his bosses when they passed him over for a promotion. He was punished, he said, for refusing to accept the racist and discriminatory treatment commonly meted
out to blacks by the Bank’s managers and supervisors. “I came to the U.S. with $12 in my pocket. I had to work at a hotel as a room service waiter to finance my education,” Biru said. “There were some winters when I couldn’t buy shoes because I had to buy books, pay for my education. Now I have no pro-
fessional identity. They stole it.” “Nobody’s going to question that the World Bank would do something like this. If you look in the public domain, they say everything I say is an exaggeration. When I asked the bank to give me my employment records, they refused. They signed, sealed and archived my records
Visit us online for daily updates and much more @ www.washingtoninformer.com Deltas Urged to ‘Turn Up Heat’ on Congress Page 11
Minorities Provide Mixed Reviews on Obama Address Page 14
seven years ago. I cannot write a curriculum vita saying I was a manager.” Biru said he fled Ethiopia because his mother was a close relative of former Emperor Haile Selassie and their lives were in danger as the communist government that overthrew the
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